There are several reasons why largeflowered tulips are so popular for spring gardens - their flamboyant colour mixes, hardiness and the way that mixing different hybrids can bring everchanging floral designs from April to June.
If you want your patch of large-flowered tulips to produce diverse blooms over a long period, you need to plant early, midseason and late varieties together. But if you prefer to have one glorious simultaneous flower show in one place, then you plant only early varieties, or only midseason or only late types.
Triumph or fosteriana types are included among early large-flowered tulips.
Mid-season tulips can include the Darwin or Gregii hybrids, fringed tulips or the multi-flowering tulips which have four or five blooms on each stem.
Late-flowering tulips include lily-flowered tulips, parrot types and the viridiflorus. People who like uniformity of shape as well as flowering season can achieve this by staying within a particular series: for instance, orange emper-or, white emperor and red emperor.
The colour combinations of tulips get more theatrical every year. Many have "flames" of contrasting colours ascending the petals such as the delectable white purple-famed zurel.
In the viridiflora tulips the petals are brushed with green. The basically white "spring green" has now been joined by "yellow spring green" and the fuchsia-pink virichic.
One of the most spectacular viridiflora tulips is the late-season Chinatown. Its pink flowers are brushed with green and the deep green leaves are edged in white.
Many other variegated-leaf tulips are now available. "Garant" is a triumph-type with large yellow flowers and creamedged leaves. "New design" is a well-established variegated-leaf favourite now available almost everywhere.
A new viridiflora is "purisima design," a short-stemmed single early flowering selection with white flowers and leaves with an edge of yellow, which itself is edged with pink.
Even a few double tulips dominate their planting spot out of all proportion to their numbers. But their luxurious flower heads are often heart-breakers in our wet B.C. springs. Rain weighs the petals down until the flower heads hit the mud and slugs make a meal of them.
Occasionally a tulip is developed which is unusual enough to become a memorable conversation piece. The Greigii hybrid "fire of love" has bright red flowers and leaves, which mix cream, red and green stripes.
Another that's sure to get second looks is the fringed red-flowered "Barbados." This has green flower buds covered with green spikes that turn brilliant red as they open outward.
Tulips can often be happier, more easily looked after and sometimes recycled to bloom next year if you plant them in containers. Tulips desperately need light, well-drained soil and absolute dryness in summer.
The container can be positioned in a sunny spot before soil is added and the potting mix amended to be sandy/gritty and welldrained.
Once the tulip foliage dies down, the tulip bulbs can be removed, dried and kept in a paper bag or cardboard box over summer. Then summer annuals can replace the tulips.
Tulips are easily lost if people leave tulip bulbs in containers and plant annuals over them, which get regular watering in summer.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions. Send them to her via amar [email protected].
